Showing 21 - 30 of 96 posts found matching keyword: politics

The 19th Amendment to the Constitution granting women the right to vote was approved in 1920. How many of those women 100 years ago would have voted for someone who bragged he could "grab 'em by the pussy"?

Raise your hand if you're sure
Based on the suffragette art of H.M. Dallas. (And yes, I know she was British.)

You know who the bad guys are. Exercise your rights this year, girls.

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An actual quote from the sitting President of the United States at the outset of the worst health crisis of the past century

Peter David?

Faster than a politically hamstrung letter carrier!

If Superman asks for a hand, give it to him
First panel: @PresVillain via Twitter.com
all other panels: Action Comics Annual #3 (1991)

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Press Briefing by President Woodrow Wilson, issued on January 26, 1919:

MR. WILSON: Thank you very much. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.

We've had a tremendous week uniting the country in our fight against the Spanish virus. I have reminded people of the importance of masks when you can't socially distance, in particular. A strong message has been sent out to young people to stop going to crowded bars and other crowded places.

I wanted to come out again today to share some additional news with you: This afternoon, my political team came to me and laid out our plans for the Armistice celebration in San Francisco, California. It's a place I love. I love that state. The drawings look absolutely beautiful. I never thought we could have something look so good, so fast with everything going on. And everything was going well — a tremendous list of speakers; thousands of people wanting to be there — and I mean, in some cases, desperately be there. They wanted to attend. People making travel arrangements all over the country; they wanted to be there. The pageantry, the signs, the excitement were really, really top of the line.

But I looked at my team, and I said, "The timing for this event is not right. It's just not right with what's happened recently — the flare up in California — to have a big celebration. It's not the right time."

It's really something that, for me — I have to protect the American people. That's what I've always done. That's what I always will do. That's what I'm about.

Fortunately, the data shows that children are lower risk from the Spanish virus, very substantially. When children do contact the virus, they often have only very mild symptoms or none at all, and medical complications are exceedingly rare. Those that do face complications often have underlying medical conditions. Ninety-nine percent of all Spanish virus hospitalizations are adults. And ninety-nine point nine six percent of all fatalities are adults. That means that children are a tiny percentage — less than one percent, and even a small percentage of one percent.

I have a very, very special person who loves children, who is — who is, I think, one of the greatest athletes of all time. A lot of people say "the greatest player of all time." Known as a "center fielder" who could have been whatever he wanted. Some people — he is the greatest player of all time, by far. Substantially more runs batted in than anybody else. In fact, he got the Most Valuable Player award recently.

And he — I'm reading off these stats. I knew he was the best. I knew he was great, but I didn't know it was almost double anybody else. But he's a man who loves children — has children, loves children, works hard with children. We're going to go outside and be with some little leaguers. Ty Cobb — you know, he's the "Georgia Peach," right? My wife said, "Darling, why do they call him the 'Georgia Peach'?" I said, "You know, he's just such a sweet man." And that's exactly what happened.

So, with that, if you have any questions — please.

Q: On the Armistice celebration, were you simply not convinced that you could keep people safe at the convention?

MR. WILSON: I just felt it was wrong, Steve, to have people going to what turned out to be a hotspot. You know, when we chose it, it was not at all hot; it was free. And all of a sudden, it happened quickly. It happens quickly. And it goes away, and it goes away quickly. The key is, we want it to go away without a lot of death, without a lot of problems.

Q: You talk about setting an example on San Francisco. But I — I just wonder: Some people are going to take away from this the lesson that you're pushing too far, too fast. It seemed, for a while, the numbers were going up in San Francisco, and you were going to have a problem there with the Anti-Mask League. This comes up at a time you're pushing for schools to reopen, have the opening of the Major League Baseball season. Isn't — isn't the example of San Francisco that we're — we're pushing too fast?

MR. WILSON: Well, baseball, as an example — we were discussing it a little while ago — you're going to be at an empty stadium. I've agreed — Charles Comiskey is a great friend of mine from the White Sox, and he asked me to throw out the first pitch, and I think I'm doing that on May 8th at Comiskey Park. And I say, "How's the crowd going to be?" And, you know, it's like you don't have a crowd; there is no such thing.

It's going to be interesting, Ty. He's not used to that. I've been at many games. He walks in; the place goes crazy. I think it'd be just as good without the crowd. You were just born with it, you know. Some people are born with it.

I don't know if — this is only for the baseball players, but I've never seen a batter hit a ball where so many bats were broken as Ty. He's got the all-time record. I said, "How do you do that?" He said, "Parents." Great parents, when you get right down to it. Right? "How do you do that?" It's called parents.

Q: That's baseball, but the question really is —

MR. WILSON: Yeah, I just — just to finish, I think — I think that we have to all set examples. I think Major League Baseball is setting the example by, you know, playing to empty stadiums, and so are other sports. You see that. Now, then they'll allow a certain number in. I see golf is now — soon will be allowing people to come in, in percentages. And all of a sudden, we want to get back to normal.

The key is to get back to normal, because nobody wants to see this. But I think it's really good that baseball is opening. It looks like football is opening. It looks like sports are opening. We — we have — it's a tremendous thing, psychologically, for our country.

And we're all — we're all, whether we're — we're going to see right now some beautiful, young Little Leaguers outside with a great future ahead of them. They're already practicing on the front lawn of the White House, and we're going to go out and say hello to them, and it'll be really great.

Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you very much.

END

...

Follow-up communiqué by President Woodrow Wilson, issued three days later:

Because of my strong focus on the Spanish Virus including scheduled meetings on VACCINES our economy and much else I wont be able to be in Chicago to throw out the opening pitch for the White Sox on May 8th -(STOP)- 
We will make it later in the season -(STOP)-

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It's election season, and the television is flooded with campaign ads.

I have repeatedly seen an advertisement for Kelley Loeffler's reelection campaign for her U.S. Senate seat in which a young black man extols her virtues not as an embarrassingly rich owner of a sports franchise and a stock exchange but as someone sympathetic to those less fortunate than her. Yet her supporter mispronounces her name throughout the whole commercial. (He says "loff-ler", yet she appears at the end of the commercial pronouncing her own name "leff-ler," almost like she is passive-aggressively correcting him after the fact.) Why would the Loeffler campaign air that? Could they not find a single person who could praise her who actually knew who she was?

Another advertisement for current president Donald Trump's reelection campaign claims that if former vice president Joe Biden wins the election, the United States will go to shit. What condition are we in now? Uncontrolled pandemic, record unemployment, race riots, oh, my! If this shit show is the current administration's idea of greatness, I'll take anyone else, please.

I suppose it's some small comfort that Marjorie Greene isn't adverting over the air in the Metro Atlanta market in her run for the state House of Representatives. Greene has become infamous as a candidate so openly racist that state Republicans have widely disavowed her, which takes some doing considering that the current Republican governor ran on a platform of successfully befouling state citizens' ability to vote. Even Facebook has said Greene has gone too far in her most recent gun-toting ads. When you're too far afield for Facebook, it's time to stop auditioning for a government seat and start looking into some professional mental help.

That said, there's nothing new to watch between those campaign commercials anyway, so maybe I should just leave my television off until December. Being too aware of who's making the decisions that impact my life is bad for my own mental health.

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Partial transcript of press briefing by the ACTUAL President of the United States on May 11, 2020:

Q: Mr. President, in one of your Mother's Day tweets, you appeared to accuse President Obama of "the biggest political crime in American History, by far." Those were your words. What crime exactly are you accusing President Obama of committing, and do you believe the Justice Department should prosecute him?

PRESIDENT: Obamagate. It's been going on for a long time. It's been going on from before I even got elected, and it's a disgrace that it happened, and if you look at what's gone on and you look at now all of this information that's being released and from what I understand, that's only the beginning. Some terrible things happened, and it should never be allowed to happen in our country again. And you'll be seeing what's going on over the next — over the coming weeks, and I wish you would write honestly about it. But unfortunately you choose not to do so.

Yeah, John, please.

Q: What is the crime, exactly, that are you accusing him of?

PRESIDENT: You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers. Except yours.

He keeps using that word, "crime." I don't think it means what he thinks it means.

(I also don't think he can read, but that's a different issue.)

Seriously, we are well into year three of this bullshit, and it still blows my mind that the so-called leader of the free world can stand in his front lawn and say dumb shit like this and everyone acts like it's business as usual.

If there's anything that should never be allowed to happen in our country again.... You know what it is.

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Press Briefing by President Franklin Roosevelt, issued on March 11, 1941:

MR. ROOSEVELT: Thank you very much. Please.

I salute the American people for following our guidelines on global distancing — even you people. It's so different looking out there when I look at you. Their devotion, your devotion is saving lives.

Today I'm instructing my administration to deny Lend-Lease Act funding for Britain while a review is conducted to assess the British role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of Nazism. Everybody knows what's going on there.

American taxpayers provide between $250 million and $300 million per year in ships to Britain. In contrast, the Allied nations contribute even less. As an independent nation, the United States has a duty to insist on full accountability.

One of the most dangerous and costly decisions from Britain was its disastrous decision to appease Germany's annexation of Czechoslovakia and other nations. We were very much opposed to what they did. Fortunately, I was not convinced and suspended travel from Europe, saving untold numbers of lives. Thousands and thousands of Americans would have died in their war.

Since its establishment in 1776, the American people have generously supported the British to provide better outcomes for the world and, most importantly, to help prevent global crises. With the outbreak of the Nazi pandemic, we have deep concerns whether America's generosity has been put to the best use possible.

Had Britain done its job to get experts into Germany to objectively assess the situation on the ground and to call out Germany's lack of transparency, Nazism could have been contained at its source, with very little death — very little death — and certainly very little death by comparison. This would have saved thousands of lives and avoided worldwide economic damage.

Instead, the British willingly took Germany's assurances to face value, and they took it just at face value and defended the actions of the German government, even praising Germany for its so-called transparency. I don't think so. The British pushed Germany's misinformation about the violence, saying it was not communicable and there was no need for travel bans. They told us, when we put on our travel ban — a very strong travel ban — there was no need to do it. "Don't do it." They actually fought us.

We will continue to engage with Britain to see if it can make meaningful reforms. For the time being, we will redirect military support and directly work with others. All of the aid that we send will be discussed at very, very powerful letters and with very powerful and influential groups and smart groups — militarily, politically, and every other way.

And, with that, if you have a few questions, we'll take them. And if not, that would be okay too.

Q: Mr. President, two questions. First, on your announcement about Britain, I understand your grievances with them. But can you address why it is the correct time to do this now in the middle of a war?

MR. ROOSEVELT: Well, we're going to be dealing with countries and we're going to be dealing with leaders of different parts of the world. We spend $300 million a year. We have for many years — more, far more, than anybody else, including Germany. We shouldn't be the only arsenal of democracy.

And it is very Germany-centric. I told that to Fuhrer Hitler. I said, "The United Kingdom is very Germany-centric." Meaning, whatever it is, Germany was always right. You can't do that. You can't do that. Not right. And we spend — and again, it's not a question of money. But when we're spending $300 million and Germany is spending $38 million, $34 million, $40 million — $42 million, in a case. It's — again, not money, but it's not right.

Q: Back to Britain, will you support the country again, if Churchill is immediately replaced? Or do you want to see him step down as a possible reform?

MR. ROOSEVELT: Well, we're doing an investigation. I — I don't know the gentleman, but I know there have been problems. And it's been very unfair to the United States — just like the League of Nations has been very, very unfair, and now they're coming into line. When they consider Germany a developing nation, and because Germany is a developing nation, they take massive advantage of the United States? Why didn't other Presidents stop this? I've been talking about it from the day I got in, and we're looking at that very, very strongly. So I have a problem with Britain and League of Nations, both of them. I'm not sure which is worse, if you want to know the truth, but we'll figure it out. Okay?

Q: You were just criticizing Britain for praising Germany as transparent, but you were saying many of the same things about Germany just a couple of months ago. So, I mean, how do you square, your decision to revoke funding?

MR. ROOSEVELT: Well, I did a reparations deal with Germany, where Germany is supposed to be paying $27 billion to our country. We're going to be watching very much to see. Now, it got a little bit waylaid by the war.

But, look, I'd love to have a good relationship with Germany. But if you look — and we made a phenomenal deal. Germany has paid — because of me, Germany has repaid us tens of billions of dollars over the course of a very short period of time. Billions of — some of that money has been spent to farmers, where they were targeted by Germany. We cannot let that happen. We can't let that happen.

Q: Mr. President, I have a quick follow on Britain. The question is if—

MR. ROOSEVELT: I told them when they put this guy here, it's nothing but trouble. He's a showboat.

Q: I'm just trying to ask you a question.

MR. ROOSEVELT: If you keep talking, I'll leave—

Q: I'm just trying to ask a question.

MR. ROOSEVELT: — and you can have it out with the rest of these people.

Q: I'm just trying to ask a question. I'm just—

MR. ROOSEVELT: If you keep talking, I'm going to leave and you can have it out with them.

Q: It's a simple question.

MR. ROOSEVELT: Just a loudmouth.

Q: You're criticizing Britain for appeasing Germany for being transparent, but you also praised Germany for being transparent in January.

MR. ROOSEVELT: I don't talk about Germany's transparency.

Q: In January, there was a fireside chat.

MR. ROOSEVELT: Well, you know, if I'm so good to Germany, how come I was the only person — the only leader of a country that closed our borders tightly against Europe?

Q: I'm talking about how you said they were transparent.

MR. ROOSEVELT: And, by the way, when I closed our border, that was long ahead of what anybody — you can ask anybody that was in the room. Twenty-one people. I was the one person that wanted to do it. Eleanor can tell you that better than anybody. I was the one person that wanted to do it. You know why? Because I don't believe everything I hear, and I closed. And if we didn't close our border early — very early, long before the kind of dates you're talking about — we would have had thousands and probably hundreds of thousands more death.

Please.

Q: I'm talking about how you said—

MR. ROOSEVELT: Please. That's enough. Thank you.

END

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When I was a kid, we used to laugh about how old and out of touch Ronald Reagan was. Hard to believe that he was only in his 60s when he became president.

In its nearly quarter-millennium history, the United States has had exactly one president who was older than 70 when he took office. He's still our current president.

Considering who is still in the running for the next term, the next president is guaranteed to be older than 70 when he takes office.

I'm sure that having back-to-back septuagenarian presidents for the first time in American history must say something about something, but I'll be damned if I know what it is.

Maybe I'll figure it out in thirty more years.

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Georgia junior senator Kelly Loeffler to Congress, February 3, 2020:

"As my notebooks filled up, I thought to myself, how did this case even make it to the Senate?"

Georgia senior senator David Purdue to Congress, February 4, 2020:

"It is clear now, after hearing all the testimony, that the primary motivation to ask Zelensky to look into the Biden-Burisma corruption issue was to root out corruption in the Ukraine."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to Congress, February 5, 2020:

"We will reject this incoherent case that comes nowhere near, *nowhere near* justifying the first presidential removal in history. This partisan impeachment will end today."

...

Here they come, walking down the street.

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Rush Limbaugh announced earlier this week he has "advanced" lung cancer. I'm not sure how advanced. Maybe his doctors don't know. So far as I can tell, he's been a talking tumor for years.

True story: in the 1990s, I considered myself a pretty hard-core conservative. My father had always resented authority of any sort, and I had accepted his libertarian philosophy. In a nutshell, I figured that anything that infringed on the rights of anyone was bad. It was Rush Limbaugh who changed my mind.

I don't remember the exact moment or quote, but it was sometime after the Clinton impeachment, probably the early days of Bush Jr's first term, definitely before Limbaugh outed himself as a racist on ESPN. Day after day, Limbaugh was on the air, drunk on the sound of his own voice. Though he claimed to be a great champion for reason, he constantly vilified and dehumanized the people he didn't agree with using insulting terms like "moron" and "libtard."

It was while listening to caller after caller parrot Rush's demeaning talking points railing against political correctness and anything else that he disagreed with ("mega dittos, Rush!"), I realized that I didn't enjoy listening to them. To any of them. These were, theoretically, the people who I shared ideology with. Did everyone who believed these things act this way? Was this how I wanted my friends to act? Was it how I wanted to act? The obvious answer was no.

In the years since, I've tried to be a better person and not condemn everyone who disagrees with me. (I know, I know. I said I've tried, not that I had succeeded.) I now believe that an unwavering obsession with political ideology is never as important as the people that ideology is supposed to serve. I believe in the facts, even when they are inconvenient. And unlike the President of the United States who used last night's Constitutionally-mandated State of the Union address to award Rush the Presidential Medal of Freedom for constantly blowing smoke up his ass, I've decided that the world would be a better place without anyone who abuses others the way that Rush Limbaugh does from his radio pulpit.

So thanks for helping on the road to self-improvement, Rush. Smoke one more cigar for me!

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The impeachment trial of Donald John Trump on the charges of abuse of power and obstruction of congress begins today, January 22, 2020.

"On the day President Trump was inaugurated, the headline of the Washington Post said, 'The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.' After that, we saw two years of the Mueller Investigation, and now we've seen this year wasted on this ridiculous investigation and these puny articles of impeachment."

Georgia senior senator David Purdue via perdue.senate.gov, January 21, 2020

"While I've only been in Washington for a couple of weeks, it's abundantly clear that impeachment is a partisan exercise to undermine @realDonaldTrump and his agenda. It's time to end the taxpayer funded political games and get Congress back to work for the American people."

Georgia junior senator Kelly Loeffler via Twitter, January 17, 2020

"Do you solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald John Trump, now pending, you will do impartial justice according to the constitution and laws, so help you God?"

Oath willingly sworn to by all sitting U.S. Senators, January 16, 2020

"Favoring neither; disinterested; treating all alike; unbiased; equitable, fair, and just."

Definition of "impartial," prior to 1600

For the record, I think the defendant is guilty as sin, but I haven't sworn any oaths.

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To be continued...

 

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